As the 2012 Olympic Summer Games open, a U.K. based social media consulting firm has devised a leader board that tracks and ranks how effectively Olympic sponsors use social media during the games.

Social Agility co-founder Tony Burgess-Webb says the year-old company uses more than 50 metrics to calculate the scores posted on its continuously updating London 2012 Social Media Scoreboard.

His company has been tracking sponsors’ social media campaigns for three months, and with opening ceremonies set for Friday three companies – Coca Cola, British Airways and Adidas – have surged to the top of the social media medal table.

“All these brands have spent a shedload of money to acquire legal sponsorship rights,” Burgess-Webb says. “There’s a sort of competition in terms of how well they’re doing at activating those sponsorships.”

Companies gain points for being active on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and for creating web pages specifically for their Olympic campaigns. Sponsors are ranked in comparison with each other, and Social Agility’s website explains a score of 100 is the border between an effective social media strategy and one that needs work.

Burgess-Webb says the highest-scoring brands are the ones that started early, singling out the Gold Medal Moms initiative as a move that propelled Procter and Gamble into the top 10.

Not coincidentally, Adecco UK’s Twitter feed has seen just one new post since June 21, and none of the previous tweets mentioned the company’s Olympic participation.

“Engagement is a competitive advantage,” Burgess-Webb says. “The brands that engage in social marketing have a competitive advantage versus brands in their space that don’t.”

The interplay between sponsorships and social media has been a hot topic for months leading into the games, as companies who paid a fortune to become official Olympic brands work to defend their sponsorships from companies hoping to use viral campaigns during the games.

Ever-expanding social media networks make that type of “ambush marketing” an alluring option, but the games’ organizing committee and the British courts have teamed up to crack down.

And U.S.-based footwear titan Nike is currently challenging a U.K. court decision banning tweets from Nike athletes bearing the hashtag, #makeitcount. The Make it Count campaign was part of Nike’s plan to trade on the profile of its sponsored athletes to make a marketing impact at the games even though Adidas is the official footwear provider of the London Games.

The court challenge didn’t stop Nike’s attempt to capitalize on the games without infringing on Adidas’ $62 million Olympic sponsorship. Wednesday morning the company launched a YouTube campaign titled “Find Your Greatness,” which doesn’t mention the Olympics or its host city, but features athletes training or competing in various cities around the world bearing the name London.

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“It’s quite possible for a non-sponsor brand to outperform a sponsor brand around an event” Burgess-Webb says. “And it’s quite clear there are more opportunities for that in social media, which are by definition not controlled.”

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